Interview Questions: What kinds of patients do you work with most and least effectively?

Becoming a doctor doesn’t stop when you get your medical degree. The next step is residency, where you’ll get to work directly with patients in hospitals or clinics. Since you will be dealing with different kinds of patients, knowing how to act professionally in a tactful way is important. Thus, an interviewer might want to know: What kinds of patients do you work with most effectively? Least effectively? And: What would you do to establish rapport with such patients?

If you’re faced with these tough questions, here are some ideas on how to respond effectively:

Answer the first question.

The interviewer wants to know what kinds of patients you work with effectively. Share your past experiences of cases in which you think you have been an effective doctor.

Do you want a patient who is a good communicator? Someone who values your time and is never late? Share your insights and thoughts on patients who were willing to ask questions ahead of time and verify words and concepts they didn’t understand. State the reasons why you think you were an effective doctor to these kinds of patients.

Go back and think of your previous experiences.

Perhaps you can remember a patient who didn’t like you as their physician. Can you remember why? Did you do anything that made the patient upset? Was the patient just uncooperative and didn’t like you for no reason?

Tell the interviewer how you managed to deal with these kinds of patients. Were you able to overcome your shortcomings? If so, tell the interviewer how you were able to manage the situation and treat the patient given the circumstances.

Be honest.

Don’t make up stories; an interviewer can always tell if you’re making things up just to boost your credentials. Being a doctor requires you to establish rapport with your patients so as to be able to get the best treatment available.

Building rapport always requires sincerity. Both the interviewer and the patients will appreciate your integrity.

Working with different kinds of patients requires you to be calm and professional no matter what situation you’re in. Prove your point to the interviewer, and keep it real. Don’t be too idealistic, and have the heart to tell your innermost thoughts. You’ll thank yourself in the end if you do.

Alan is the creator of Interview Success Formula, a training program that has helped more than 40,000 job seekers to ace their interviews and land the jobs they deserve. Interviewers love asking curveball questions to weed out job seekers. But the truth is, most of these questions are asking about a few key areas. Learn more about how to outsmart tough interviewers by watching this video.